A hundred years ago
Sir Rutherford Alcock writes to Monday's Times that though rain has now fallen in some of the famine-struck districts of China, and that by the month of October it may produce good results, till then none of the poor creatures dependent on the Relief Fund—which is all but exhausted—will have a chance of any other means of support. A hundred thousand families are thus dependent, and the Relief Committee in China urgently telegraph for £5,000 at once, of which the collectors here can now only forward about£800. Let usoffer Sir Rutherford Alcock a practical suggestion. We have received from China a grotesque, but pathetic little picture-book, painting the horrors undergone in the famine districts, the stripping of the trees of bark as well as leaves, the eating of the thatch off the houses, the feeding on the dead, the selling of boys and girls into slavery, each rough print accompanied by an explanation of its drift in Chinese, which, we need hardly say, would have been quite lost upon the present writer, had not the friend who sent it kindly given a short translation of the meaning of each. A great multiplication of this little book, with the Chinese explanations and English interpretations, and the appeal of the Committee for help on the cover, would, we are persuaded, touch more minds and hearts than any mere circular. It bring home what famine means, at once vividly and with that pathos which is all the deeper for its quaint and grotesque character.
Spectator, 15 June 1878
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